Day-one DLC makes sense, Bethesda VP says

Pete Hines says it uses the gap between finishing content and release

Making downloadable content available on the very same day a game releases--AKA day-one DLC--is one of this console generation's biggest faux pas. Gamers liken it to selling a car then, as the buyer pulls out of the lot, charging extra for the Highway Readiness Pack of a windshield and headlights.

Bethesda VP Pete Hines told OXM UK that attitude often comes from a misunderstanding of game development. Artists and other content creators stop making new stuff a good amount of time before the game ships in most workflows, to allow for plenty of testing and polish. Those people might as well be doing something, Hines argues.

"There's a pretty long gap where your artists and designers are fixing a bug if they get one, or they may be playing the game to find bugs, but they're not making a new anything for a long time, and you have creative people who are used to creating--so why would you make them wait some period of time, months in some cases, to start making new stuff so you can say it was after DLC?"

It may sound odd coming from Bethesda, which releases most of its downloadable content months after its corresponding game--as was the case with Skyrim and its first expansion content, Dawnguard.

"It takes a long time to make a Dawnguard or a Dragonborn--it's not the kind of stuff you can just turn around in two weeks or three weeks," Hines said. "it's not that we're trying to put it out much later, we're willing to do it later, we're willing to continue to support it because we continue to believe there's a demand and an interest in that kind of stuff. We're not stalling for stalling's sake."